She’s a 40-year-old mother of eight, with a ninth child due soon. The family homestead in a Burundi village is too small to provide enough food, and three of the children have quit school for lack of money to pay required fees.

“I regret to have made all those children,” says Godelive Ndageramiwe. “If I were to start over, I would only make two or three.”

At Ahmed Kasadha’s prosperous farm in eastern Uganda, it’s a different story.

“My father had 25 children – I have only 14 so far, and expect to produce more in the future,” says Kasadha, who has two wives. He considers a large family a sign of success and a guarantee of support in his old age.

By the time Ndageramiwe’s ninth child arrives, and any further members of the Kasadha clan, the world’s population will have passed a momentous milestone. As of Oct. 31, according to the U.N. Population Fund, there will be 7 billion people sharing Earth’s land and resources.

In Western Europe, Japan and Russia, it will be an ironic milestone amid worries about low birthrates and aging populations. In China and India, the two most populous nations, it’s an occasion to reassess policies that have already slowed once-rapid growth.

But in Burundi, Uganda and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, the demographic news is mostly sobering as the region staggers under the double burden of the world’s highest birthrates and deepest poverty. At current rates, the regional population of nearly 900 million could reach 2 billion in 40 years, accounting for about half of the projected global population growth over that span.

“Most of that growth will be in Africa’s cities, and in those cities it will almost all be in slums where living conditions are horrible,” said John Bongaarts of the Population Council, a New York-based research organization.

Is catastrophe inevitable? Not necessarily. But experts say most of Africa – and other high-growth developing nations such as Afghanistan and Pakistan – will be hard-pressed to furnish enough food, water and jobs for their people, especially without major new family-planning initiatives.

“Extreme poverty and large families tend to reinforce each other,” said Lester Brown, the environmental analyst who heads the Earth Policy Institute in Washington. “The challenge is to intervene in that cycle and accelerate the shift to smaller families.”

Without such intervention, Brown said, food and water shortages could fuel political destabilization in developing regions.

“There’s quite a bit of land that could produce food if we had the water to go with it,” he said. “It’s water that’s becoming the real constraint.”

The International Water Management Institute shares these concerns, predicting that by 2025 about 1.8 billion people will live in places suffering from severe water scarcity.

POOR WILL BE HURT THE MOST

According to demographers, the world’s population didn’t reach 1 billion until 1804, and it took 123 years to hit the 2 billion mark in 1927. Then the pace accelerated – 3 billion in 1959, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1998.

Looking ahead, the U.N. projects that the world population will reach 8 billion by 2025, 10 billion by 2083. But the numbers could be much higher or lower, depending on such factors as access to birth control, infant mortality rates and average life expectancy – which has risen from 48 years in 1950 to 69 years today.

“Overall, this is not a cause for alarm – the world has absorbed big gains since 1950,” said Bongaarts, a vice president of the Population Council. But he cautioned that strains are intensifying: rising energy and food prices, environmental stresses, more than 900 million people undernourished.

“For the rich, it’s totally manageable,” Bongaarts said. “It’s the poor, everywhere, who will be hurt the most.”

The executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, former Nigerian health minister Babatunde Osotimehin, describes the 7 billion milestone as a call to action – particularly in the realm of enabling adolescent girls to stay in school and empowering women to control the number of children they have.

“It’s an opportunity to bring the issues of population, women’s rights and family planning back to center stage,” he said in an interview. “There are 215 million women worldwide who need family planning and don’t get it. If we can change that, and these women can take charge of their lives, we’ll have a better world.”

But as Osotimehin noted, population-related challenges vary dramatically around the world.

THE ASIAN GIANTS

Across India, the teeming slums, congested streets, and crowded trains and trams are testimony to the country’s burgeoning population. Already the second-most populous country, with 1.2 billion people, India is expected to overtake China around 2030 when its population soars to an estimated 1.6 billion.

But even as the numbers increase, the pace of the growth has slowed. Demographers say India’s fertility rate – now 2.6 children per woman – should fall to 2.1 by 2025 and to 1.8 by 2035.

More than half of India’s population is younger than 25, and some policy planners say this so-called “youth dividend” could fuel a productive surge over the next few decades. But population experts caution that the dividend could prove to be a liability without vast social investments.

“If the young population remains uneducated, un-skilled and unemployable, then that dividend would be wasted,” said Shereen Jejeebhoy, a Population Council demographer in New Delhi.

For now, China remains the most populous nation, with 1.34 billion people. In the past decade it added 73.9 million, more than the population of France or Thailand.

Nonetheless, its growth has slowed dramatically and the population is projected to start shrinking in 2027. By 2050, according to some demographers, it will be smaller than it is today.

“It’s like a train on the track that’s still moving but the engine is already off,” said Gu Baochang, a professor of demography at Beijing’s Renmin University.

In the 1970s, Chinese women had five to six children each, on average. Today China has a fertility rate – the number of children the average woman is expected to have in her lifetime – of around 1.5, well below the 2.1 replacement rate that demographers say is needed to keep populations stable in developed countries.

Three decades of strict family-planning rules that limit urban families to one child and rural families to two helped China achieve a rapid decline in fertility, but the policy has brought problems as well.

Before long, there will be too few young Chinese people to easily support a massive elderly population.

WESTERN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES

Spain and Italy, both forced to enact austerity measures in a bid to narrow budget deficits, are battling common problems: Women have chosen to have their first child at a later age, and the difficulties of finding jobs and affordable housing are discouraging some couples from having any children at all.

In 2010, for the fourth consecutive year, more Italians died than were born, according to the national statistics agency. Italy’s population nonetheless grew slightly to 60.6 million because of immigration, which is a highly charged issue across Europe.

Unlike many countries in Europe, France’s population is growing slightly but steadily every year. It has one of the highest birth rates in the European Union with about two children per woman.

One reason is immigration to France by Africans with large-family traditions, but it’s also due to family-friendly legislation. The government offers public preschools, subsidies to families with more than one child, generous maternity leave and tax exemptions for employers of nannies.

Like France, the United States has one of the highest population growth rates among industrialized nations. Its fertility rate is just below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman, but its population has been increasing by almost 1 percent annually because of immigration.

AFRICA

Lagos, Nigeria, is expected to overtake Cairo soon as Africa’s largest city.

In Nigeria’s commercial capital, where the population is estimated at 15 million and growing at 6 percent or more each year, problems with traffic congestion, sanitation and water supplies are staggering; a recent article in U.N.-Habitat said two-thirds of the residents live in poverty.

The rest of Nigeria isn’t growing as fast – estimates of its growth rate range from 2 percent to 3.2 percent. But it’s already Africa’s most populous country with more than 160 million people.

Ndyanabangi Bannet, the U.N. Population Fund’s deputy representative in Nigeria, notes that 60 percent of the population is under 30 and needs to be accommodated with education, training and health care.

In Uganda, another fast-growing country, President Yoweri Museveni once was disdainful of population control and urged Ugandans, particularly in rural areas, to continue having large families.

Recently, the government has conceded that its 3.2 percent population growth rate must be curbed because the economy can’t keep pace.

“The government has been convinced that unless it invests in reproductive health, Uganda is destined to a crisis,” said Hannington Burunde of the Uganda Population Secretariat.

Another of the fastest-growing countries is Burundi. With roughly 8.6 million people, it’s the second-most densely populated African country after neighboring Rwanda.

Omer Ndayishimiye, head of Burundi’s Population Department, said continued high growth coincides with dwindling natural resources. Land suitable for farming will decline, and poverty will be rampant, he said, noting that 90 percent of the population live in rural areas and rely on farming to survive.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

A Buffalo, Minn., man was fatally injured Wednesday morning in Hugo when a tractor-trailer and a front-end loader apparently collided. Washington County sheriff’s deputies were dispatched about 8:40 a.m. to the 14600 block of Irish Avenue, where the truck and front-end loader crashed, according to a news release issued by the sheriff’s office. Responding deputies found one man with critical...

Target plans to boost its same-day delivery capability by paying $550 million for Shipt, its latest move to try to catch up with Amazon. Shipt, which charges members $99 a year, sends people out to choose and deliver groceries from stores. Target said Wednesday that it will add more products to the service next year, such as home goods and...

Ten years ago, Wisconsinite Helen McCombie decided to ring the bell for the Salvation Army’s red kettle for 30 hours straight, raising $15,000. She continued the tradition for two more years before passing it on to others. This year, the Salvation Army in western Wisconsin hopes the bell-ringing marathoners will bring in $75,000 to help save its homeless shelters, which...

BENSON, Minn. — Minnesota’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the death of a man who died last week after a fall at the Benson Power plant in west-central Minnesota. Almost a week later, the police have not yet released the name of the man, though family members have been notified. The investigation into the incident is ongoing with...

A blind, potbellied pig found abandoned in southern Minnesota will get a second chance at life at an animal rescue in North Dakota. Alison Smith, owner of Kitty City animal rescue, took in Wanda the pig, who was found deserted at a residence in Albert Lea, Minn. A volunteer with Kitty City made the more than 500-mile trek last weekend...